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December 6: A look back at the horror

A victim is wheeled away from the University of Montreal after a lone gunman opened fire on Dec.6, 1989. A dozen years later, women's groups. (Shaney Komulainen / The Canadian Press)

By Star wires

Fri., Dec. 6, 2013

This story appeared in the Star December 7, 1989

MONTREAL—Fourteen women are dead after a gunman yelling “you’re all a bunch of feminists” went on a shooting rampage at the University of Montreal.

Thirteen other students—nine women and four men—were being treated for bullet wounds in three hospitals last night. Two were in critical condition.

The young killer, dressed in hunting garb, committed suicide with his own rifle after yesterday’s massacre, one of the worst such incidents ever in North America.

At about 5.20 p.m., the gunman rushed into a packed classroom on the second floor of the university’s engineering building and yelled in French before opening fire, police director Claude St. Laurent said. One witness said he heard the killer say: “I want the women.”

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The man divided the students in the classroom by sex and sent the men into the corridor. Before opening fire on the women, he screamed: “You’re all a bunch of feminists.”

The dead were found on three floors of the six-storey building housing the Ecole Polytechnique at 2900 Edouard Montpetit Blvd., St. Laurent said.

Six women were shot dead in the classroom, and a seventh in another room on the same floor.

The gunman has not been identified. Police had no motive for his hatred of women.

The shooting occurred in the last hour of classes of the fall term.

Exams, which were scheduled to begin today, have been postponed.

The man began his rampage in the engineering school in a first-floor cafeteria, where he killed three women with what police believe was a .22-calibre rifle.

Working his way up the building, he then killed the women in the second-floor classroom after yelling his anti-feminist slurs. He went up to the third floor and murdered four more women in the corridor, climbed to the fourth and fifth where several more people were injured, then returned to the third floor where he shot himself.

A police officer called to the scene found his daughter was among the dead.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney expressed his shock at the slaughter and sent his condolences to the families of the victims. In a message to the school, Mulroney said: “I still don’t know all the details of the event but I would still like to transmit to you as well as to the families of the victims, my condolences and those of the Canadian people.”

One male student who caught a glimpse of the killer said he went about his business deliberately, “walking calmly” as he fired.

Another student said a bullet went past his leg and he brought his hands up in a pleading gesture. The killer left him alone.

“He was clearly gunning for the women, “ the student said.

It was pandemonium outside the building. As a police SWAT team moved inside, shocked students stood in the frigid night and terrified parents arrived on the scene fearing the worst.

The injured, at least two in critical condition, were taken to four hospitals.

A temporary morgue was set up in the engineering building so that parents could identify bodies. Police appealed to parents of University of Montreal students to phone their children in order to speed identification of bodies.

Some parents who gathered in an auditorium in the school sat with their heads in their hands; others cried openly. Many didn’t know whether their children were among the dead.

One father waiting for news of his 22-year-old daughter said, “She was there. No one saw her die, but nothing gives us any hope. We are waiting to hear. What can you do when some idiot, some madman, comes in.”

“I saw death close up and I shook, “ said Vanthona Ouy, 22, one of scores of horrified students who streamed out of the building after the carnage. “It’s our friends who have been killed.”

Francois Bordeleau ran from the first to the second floor and had to drag people by the collar to keep them from going in the man’s direction. “It was a human hunt, and we were the quarry,” Bordeleau said.

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